Charity (19 page)

“What kind of hard feelings?”

“Those two sisters, peeking over at one another all these years. And Pa Kaiser going back and forth between them.” Lena shook her head and frowned as she powered her rolling pin. “Once he went over to Julia’s and stayed there for over a month, but then he went back again to Gertrude’s house. I don’t know what she did or said to get him to go back. I’m not supposed to know about that, but Nyla told me. Oscar was old enough to remember it.” Lena ran a spatula beneath the circle of pastry dough and folded it neatly in half. She brought a pie tin to the board and placed the folded pastry so the fold ran directly down the middle of the pan. She unfolded it, pressed the dough into the shape of the pan, and with quick strokes of a sharp knife, cut all the way around the rim trimming the excess crust off and sliding the pieces over to the corner of her floured board. She began again with another scoop of dough from the bowl.

“Pa just walked over to Julia’s one day and kept going back there at night after he came home from work. But he went back all right—back to Gertrude’s, I mean. He was a weak man. Folks say that in the beginning he had courted Julia, but old man Gareis talked him into marrying Gertrude. Pa got his first well rig in the deal, so he went along with it. Fool man. Can you imagine marrying a woman to get a well rig? Good night!” She finished the second crust and lined the second pan in her same sure manner and moved on to a third. “Guess they thought nobody would ever marry Gertrude, and Julia was a pretty little thing in those days and someone else would come along for her. Only nobody ever did. She stayed an old maid all those years—except for that one month.”

Gustie still struggled with her apples. At least ten of these apples were needed to fill one of Lena’s pies. “How could they live, so close together like that?” Gustie was all amazement at what she was hearing. She stopped peeling to flex her fingers which were beginning to cramp from her tight grip on the knife. “After he had lived with Julia? How could Gertrude take him back? How could Julia stay around after he left her and went back to Gertrude?”

“No place to go.” Lena answered her own question. “None of ’em. No place else to go. Gertrude sure couldn’t go anyplace. She already had two little boys—Oscar and Walter. Where would she have gone? Julia had no place to go either. So they all stayed together. One big miserable family. Then, after Pa went back to Gertrude, along came Will, and then Frederick, and Julia started pitching in and helping a little with the boys. Though to hear Ma tell it, she never did a thing. I don’t believe that. I think she did help. Especially with Frederick. Gertrude was getting too tired to cope with a new little one so late in her life. I guess she had no milk left. So Frederick was the only one of her babies to be bottle fed. Julia could have helped there.”

The tins were all lined with pastry and three perfectly formed circles lay folded in a row, waiting for the time when she would lay them over the apple-filled pans and close the crusts around the rims. She sat down and absently, without missing a beat in her story telling, began to slice the apples Gustie had peeled, letting the pieces fall in even layers into a readied pie tin. “Ma probably appreciated Julia’s being there, even though she will never admit it.” Lena paused and looked out the window visualizing the scene. “You know how I think it worked?” She pointed with her knife toward her imagined scene. “I think that neither of them really loved Pa. They sort of put up with him, you see, and they didn’t feel it so much when...well I don’t know.” Lena shook her head and went back to slicing apples.

When the pie pan was filled to her satisfaction, Lena went to the cupboard and came back with a tin of sugar and small boxes of cinnamon and nutmeg. She sprinkled the sugar and spices liberally over the apples, tossing them lightly with a fork to evenly coat all the pieces. “And it was Gertrude who had children. So she was more or less tied to Pa, you know. What a mess it would have been if Julia had had any. Whew! But she was lucky, I guess, that way.”

“Do you think one of them killed him?”

“I don’t really know. Oh, I’ve thought about it. But if they were going to kill him, they’d have done it, one or the other of them, when they were young. Not now, when they were all three of them old and one foot in the grave. Don’t you think? What’s the point? They’d stood it this long. Besides if anybody was going to kill anybody, I always thought it would be Ma killing Julia, or vice versa. Oh, shoot, I’m running out of sugar. Thought I had another whole can, but I don’t. Don’t know where my mind is lately.”

Gustie tilted her head. “You don’t?”

“Well, O’Grady’s is open till noon. Then everybody shuts down for the Fourth.”

“I’ll go get some. Anything else you need? While I’m there?”

Lena shook her boxes of spices next to her ear. “Nutmeg? And cinnamon?”

Gustie paused and turned back at the door. Lena was picking up the apple peeling where Gustie had left off. “Have you told all this to Dennis or Pard?”

“No. It doesn’t seem right to bring it all up. Like gossip.” She waved the idea away like a pesky fly, “Fiddlesticks! Folks don’t go around killing people over things that happened thirty and forty years ago. It must have been like they say—a stranger. More like an accident.”

Gustie didn’t feel like letting it go. “Who found the body?”

Lena stopped her peeling. “Well, I’m not sure.”

“Who saw Will coming out of the barn?”

“Oh, that was Alvinia. She don’t miss much.” Lena abruptly changed the subject. “It’s the strangest thing. You know, Kenny says we have a credit there. That he overcharged us on something or other, I don’t understand it. Some mistake. But whatever it was, it was in our favor. So you won’t need any money. He’ll just subtract it from our credit.” Lena shrugged. Gustie nodded.

When Gustie returned with Lena’s spices and sugar, she was surprised to see Tom back under the trees, and yet another wagon in front of the house.
This is a busy place
, she thought. The horses hitched to the visiting wagon looked familiar: dapple gray Percherons—not as well brushed as they should be, but well fed and healthy looking otherwise.

She hadn’t reached the door before Lena opened the screen and flapped her hands as if she were shooing flies. “What’s the matter? Here’s your—”

Lena interrupted her with a hiss and more frantic waves of her hand. “Go home, now. Go on now.”

Before Gustie could get annoyed at being shooed off like a stray cat, there appeared behind Lena an old familiar face, impeccable, as usual, in a gray suit and a nasty smile.

“Well, Augusta,” he said.

Lena threw up her hands. “I tried. We didn’t tell him anything. Believe me. You might as well come in then. No sense standing out there in the sun. It’s going to get hot.”

Gustie nearly lost her nerve, but her left wrist began to throb, and she felt a sudden grounding in her own pain. She said, “I’d rather speak to him in private. Wouldn’t you prefer that, Peter?”

“Peter?” Lena eyed the man. “You said your name was Steven.”

He ignored Lena and continued to smile at Gustie. His way of smiling without showing any teeth made him look more sinister the more he smiled.

“It’s Peter,” Gustie said. “Peter Madigan. What’s wrong, Peter? So ashamed of your mission you couldn’t use your own name?”

From inside, the pleasant smell of apples was overpowered by acrid cigar smoke. She heard Walter’s gravelly laugh and placed the Percherons. They were his horses, part of Pa Kaiser’s big draft team used to pull the well rig around.

Maintaining as much righteous dignity as possible, the stranger said, “I think this would be better discussed in private.”

The two of them walked away from the house.

Lena spun around and shook her finger at Walter, “You dumb cluck! With the whole town not knowing who or where Gustie is, you have to parade him over here!”

“Well,” Walter said, gesturing with his cigar, “You being a friend of hers, I thought...”

“You thought! You thought, all right. My eye! Oh, sit down and be quiet. You make me tired. And put that cigar out. Who said you could smoke that thing in my house?”

Walter sat as he was told and looked wounded. Will handed him a tin ashtray for his cigar.

Lena watched through her kitchen curtains. She could see the discussion between Gustie and Steven—or Peter—or whatever the heck his name was, was heated even though she could not hear their voices. When Steven-Peter made a move as if he were going to strike Gustie, Lena said, “That’s it! Will, you better get out there right now! I think he might hit her.”

Will was up and out the door making himself visible very quickly. He ambled casually over to where Gustie and Peter Madigan stood arguing under the chokecherry trees.

“Everything all right out here?” he asked, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick.

Neither Gustie nor Peter Madigan spoke. She glared at the man, her jaw set, her face deeply flushed.

Peter, hoping perhaps to find some kindred male spirit in Will, said stiffly, “I have a right to see my sister’s grave,
if
she is dead, like Augusta says.”

Will looked down and stirred the gravel with the toe of his boot. “That right? Is his sister dead?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Gustie answered, her voice low and angry.

“You know where she’s buried?” Will tossed the toothpick away.

“Yes, I do, and he has no right to anything.” Gustie spoke quietly, but defiantly.

“I am not leaving here till I see it.” Peter Madigan said.

“Rot here, then.” Gustie turned away, and Peter grabbed her roughly by the arm. Will stepped in and with a grip that held the promise of greater strength lifted Madigan’s hand off Gustie’s arm. At the same time he gently rested his other hand on Gustie’s shoulder. She stopped her retreat.

“Maybe you should just take him to his sister’s grave, Gus,” Will said. “If he is the brother, he has a right to see it.”

“It’s a long way from here.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.” Madigan spoke more civilly, now that his wrist felt Will Kaiser’s iron grip.

Gustie felt beaten, trapped. Will let go of Peter Madigan. He kept his other hand resting lightly on Gustie’s shoulder and said, ignoring Madigan’s presence altogether, “I’ll go with you, Gus. Don’t you worry. I won’t let you go off alone with this piker. Then we’ll be rid of him. Whaddya say?”

Gustie said nothing. She felt she had no choice.

“Just have to go tell Lena. You...” he spoke sternly to Madigan, “get over there and get on that horse.” He pointed to Tom, saddled and ready to go. As an afterthought, Will asked Gustie, “Where we goin’?”

“Crow Kills.”

Will paused for a moment, then went into the house to tell his wife.

In the wagon box, Will took up the reins. Gustie sat beside him. Peter Madigan, still on his own two feet, looked with dismay at the narrow wagon seat. Will said, “You’re going to have to ride that horse over there unless you want to sit in the back like a sack of spuds.” Will chuckled quietly.

Peter Madigan clambered aboard Tom, who was a very big horse.

Will made clucking noises and tapped Biddie on her rump with the reins. “Okay. Here we go.”

Gustie had never made a longer journey. They could not go too fast because Madigan was no horseman. She looked over her shoulder from time to time just to see him bouncing painfully up and down in the saddle. She suspected that Will was keeping to this pace deliberately, a quick trot, at which he knew Tom’s gait was the most bone jarring.

At least Madigan had lost his smile and he was quiet. All his concentration was required to keep a white-knuckled grip on the saddle horn. Perspiration ran down his face. His hat was gone.

Will was not much for conversation, so Gustie was left to her own reverie. This was the first time she had ridden behind Biddie without holding the reins. This spring wagon was the same in which she and Clare had journeyed for two weeks, all their belongings tied to the back. When they finally had their things loaded and were driving out of Apple Creek, Wisconsin, Clare breathed relief, “No more train.” Gustie thought it was the train ride that was making Clare feel so ill. The cars were stuffy, crowded, and Clare hated the confinement. So they got off in Wisconsin where the conductor told them they would find decent lodgings. While Clare rested, Gustie bought the horse and wagon. She had not liked spending Clare’s money. But Clare insisted. “We’re going to need them sooner or later. We’re just getting them sooner, that’s all.”

Several nights spent in a soft bed with fresh sheets, a steamy bath, and good food seemed to restore Clare, and she declared herself ready to travel. They set out for South Dakota. For awhile, Clare had felt better out in the open air under an expanse of sky that had lifted their hearts. Out here, there was more sky than earth. Gustie sensed that Clare, for the first time in her life, felt real freedom. The nervousness that had kept her scanning the faces of all the passengers on the train was gone. They had mild weather and slept under the stars. The man Clare had feared now rode behind Gustie. She felt it almost as a grace that Clare was now beyond his reach.